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The lines between politics and family and public and personal seemed to have blurred for the Congress leader and mother of two, who also found herself at the centre of a debate with a BJP MP's comments on her choice of clothes being slammed as sexist and misogynistic.

"Priyanka Gandhi wears jeans and top in Delhi but when she comes to rural areas she is clad in a sari and wears sindoor," Harish Dwivedi, BJP MP from Basti in Uttar Pradesh, told reporters in his constituency on Sunday night.

Monday was also the day Priyanka Gandhi joined the microblogging site, getting tens of thousands of followers within hours of logging in.

Dwivedi's widely reported comment was perhaps part of the "vindictive and vicious" political atmosphere that her husband Robert Vadra warned her against in an emotional Facebook post on Monday.

As Priyanka Gandhi, 47, travelled slowly through the streets of Lucknow with her brother and Congress president Rahul Gandhi and party colleague Jyotiradiya Scindia, Vadra sent her his best wishes.

"Please keep her safe," Vadra said, doffing his hat to his "best friend" over the years.

"My Best wishes to you P, on your new journey of working in Uttar Pradesh and serving the people of India. You have been my best friend, a perfect wife, and the best mother to our children," Vadra said.

"There is a very vindictive and vicious political atmosphere... But I know, it's her duty to serve the people and now we hand her to the people of India. Please keep her safe," he added.

Priyanka Gandhi, who married Vadra in 1997, last week came out in strong support of her husband, dropping him off at the Enforcement Directorate office for his first day of questioning in connection with a money laundering probe.

"He is my husband, he is my family...," she said in her unambiguous message of solidarity.

In Lucknow on Monday, crowds jostled with each other to catch a glimpse of the woman who many old timers said carried the stamp of her grandmother Indira Gandhi.

Though Priyanka Gandhi has often campaigned for her mother Sonia Gandhi and brother Rahul Gandhi in the state, this was the first time that she was there as Congress general secretary and most couldn't get enough of her.

As her 'rath' inched through major thoroughfares, enthusiastic people and party members took vantage positions to click a pic.

Party tricolours and hoardings all over gave the city a festive look.

Some posters showed Priyanka Gandhi in a 'Durga Mata' avatar riding a lion.